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 Hellebore wrote:
My argument is that something that unreliable is not something that can be tactically critical.

it's opportunistic reactionary. Which is fine, but I don't think it had the tactical importance you ascribe in the game.

You accepted stunning a vehicle over killing it because that's what you got, not because that's what you were trying to get.

There's no advantage stunning a vehicle provides that destroying it didn't, except in 3rd glancing tables where you already knew you weren't going to be able to kill it, so you were hoping for the next best thing.

Being able to pivot when your desired result doesn't materialise is a great skill, but I don't think it reflects the likelyhood of vehicle stunning into the game.

I consider it tactically critical because it meant that I could accept a temporary "not-fire' from a vehicle and opt to move to the next target. Like, of course it would be nice if I just blew up every Leman Russ I pointed my guns at, but that wasn't going to happen at all. What the non-destroyed options provided was a way of effectively suppressing vehicles without committing more firepower to get a kill that turn, giving me a better chance at suppressing multiple targets. I compare that to nowadays where you can't suppress a vehicle, and in order to remove its counterfire you have to commit enough weaponry to fully kill it. What Shaken, Stun, Weapon Destroyed did was provide a way for the total firepower of your army to potentially shut down larger number of critical targets through suppression.

Like, if I had 9 Lascannons worth of firepower, and it took an average of 9 Lascannons to destroy a tank, but an average of 3 to prevent it from firing, I could maneuver to aim for stunning all three Russ's rather than just killing one and have the other two firing their horrible pie plates at my beloved Space Marines. And preferably through maneuvering and order of fire, allow for target adjustments as the results of the dice swung one way or another. Because you could choose to optimize to suppress more than you would likely kill I see it as providing a very critical tactical option.

For whatever reason I played a lot against Guard, Chaos and Orks (with looted vehicles) in 3rd and 4th edition. Managing opposing Ordinance was a big deal, so I was trying to leverage Stun/Shaken all the time.

"Pinning isn't reliable".

Come to 30k. Play against the 8th Legion. I'll show you just want Pinning can do.

 aphyon wrote:
in the old rules superheavy walkers cannot be locked in close combat by anything that is not also a superheavy walker or gargantuan creature. they can literally just stride away from anything else.

This is how it should be, I think, and not just for Superheavy but ALL such large units. I don't understand why the Keeper of Secrets or the Dreadnought stand in one place to fight against some Neophytes unless you do Fall Back, and lose turn for your important model. Seems like bad idea to bring this model if someone can just make it useless with crap chaff unit forever.

And yes, I understand tarpitting, but this is to deal with normal-sized unit that is good at CC. It make no sense for the 400-ton Dreadnought can't barge through this chaff, or the 18ft-tall Greater Daemon can't just laugh & step over this idiots who try to do fisticuffs with her.

 Hellebore wrote:


The fact that monsters couldn't lose their legs and be immobile, or lose their guns and not be able to shoot, was also a problem of the AV era. There is nothing intrinsically different between a monster's legs and a vehicle's tracks (or robot legs) that mean damaging them would immobilise one and not the other.

Others have addressed your other points about the AV system in older editions so I'll just address this one. I think the impulse to treat mechanical things differently from biological things in the rules was sound. Mechanical things tend to break in ways that biological ones don't. Despite the generally more simulationist approach of the older editions, I don't think they felt that degrading MC capabilities in response to damage was something worth exploring. After all if they aren't doing it for a 3 wound chapter master why bother with a 4 wound carnifex?

It wasn't worth exploring when a Carnifex was the biggest monster around.

It is very worth exploring when you are dealing with Tyrannofexes*, Riptides, Wraithknights, Greater Daemons, etc.

Older editions were simply not designed to manage the scope and scale creep monsters enjoyed since early 5th edition.

*Or you know, pretty much every Tyranid monster that has been added to the faction since 4th edition.

Deadnight wrote:

OK I'll bite because I am curious wayniac. If 10th doesnt 'feel' like 40k to you, What does/should 40k 'feel' like? What makes 40k 40k?

I would like to take a crack at this. I think it is a layered discussion that combines aspects of the lore, the game, GW, and the community.

I was not an Oldhammer player. While I've enjoyed 40k for a fair bit of time, I didn't start into the hobby proper until a year or two ago. That being said, I certainly feel some dissatisfaction going from my brief encounter in 8th to 9th edition codex and now to the least satisfying 10th. This prompted me to go back and take a look at the old editions of 40k. I do not have any rose tinted goggles for them because I am a newcomer, thus I had no experience with them prior.

I will be making comparisons between Oldhammer, Modernhammer (9th & 10th), and the MESBG.

From a lore standpoint, I think it is entirely fair to say that the Gathering Storm, the introduction of Primaris, the Indomitus, and the return of the Primarchs have considerably been at odds with the tone of the 41st Millennium. The lore books of the grinding, grimdark battlefields on countless worlds and billions of lives whose names shall not be remembered shifted suddenly to a focus upon a handful of characters. Introducing Guilliman was like adding Superman to WW1. Don't get me wrong, a Primarch's return is absolutely a massive event - but then the writers proceeded to have Guilliman go on to invade Nurgle's Garden, beat Mortarian, fight Magnus on the moon, and suddenly give the Imperium Space Marine Legion-level reinforcements after the loss of a single planet.

I think we can both agree this wildly changes the setting, if not from a perspective of scale or tone, at least from a perspective of.. well.. perspective. Individual battles or campaigns like Vraks are still there, but they are considerably dwarfed compared to what the new Regent of the Imperium is up to. Even as more Primarchs are added, the focus will just be upon these superhuman demigods that move and shake the entire setting. As far as I can tell, and at least certainly for myself, its a jarring change in the direction compared to what came before. Personally, I would much rather have had 100 stories like Dawn of War & Winter Assault than a single Gathering Storm that springboards changes to the entire setting.

From a gameplay standpoint, I believe that 40k as a tabletop game has lost its "soul" to some because it has shifted its focus and attention away from simulation of a battle and more towards being a game.

You might raise the counterpoint that 40k was never a good nor realistic depiction of a battle. I would agree with you, but I do not think the quality of that simulation detracts from the fact that this was the intent.

As I have read the older editions (3rd, 5th, 6th, and even a fan edition of Oldhammer), the consistent thing that I have noticed between those editions which is absent from newer editions of 40k is what I would like to dub "Fumbly Nerdstuff".

To define the term: Fumbly Nerdstuff is when a game takes a considerable amount of time to account for various factors and consequences of an action taken in a nerdy game (ie D&D or Warhammer) for the purposes of simulating a narrative of what happens before, during, and as a result of that action.

As an example: If I swing a sword and hit an Orc in an RPG, adding modifiers of my relative position to the Orc from heightened terrain to the location which I hit the Orc on his body to rolling a result on a table of what happens to the Orc when I hit him with my sword is an example of "Fumbly Nerdstuff". You can absolutely have way too much Fumbly Nerdstuff in a game, and I think everyone's tolerance level for Fumbly Nerdstuff is different.

Older editions of 40k definitely seem to be more interested in the battle you are playing be more of a battle than a game. There are numerous rules differentiating a walker from a tank to a biker and how they interact with movement or attacking. Vehicles react differently to being wounded than an infantry unit and a destroyed vehicle can become another piece of terrain on the map. Melee combat is described in terms of advancing or retreating lines. Movement and shooting has more direct interaction.

And I would not say this is unique to 40k, because I will draw upon what most consider to be GW's best game: MESBG. MESBG's entire rulebook is written in a way where the designers clearly want the player to be approaching the game as a simulated battle or a relived moment from the movies involving characters rather than just "minis on a board". The rules account for being knocked prone, being pushed and falling off ledges, jumping chasms. Combats are written in terms of duelists having a cinematic clash where one assumes parries and strikes. Arrows have to account for terrain and blocking enemy models getting in the way of the shot. There's a fair bit of this Fumbly Nerdstuff written for the intent of a simulated clash between two forces in Middle-Earth.

9th edition introduced, imo, one of the better ideas GW has had in 40k, the Crusade gameplay mode. The most fun I've had with 40k is writing up a story with a bunch of characters matched against an army that my friend made, tweaking the lists to give every unit a personality and a particular role in the army, and then simulating those engagements against my friend who has done the same, then the various post-game Crusade mechanics and written battle reports which followed - along with the story that created. However, Crusade is merely one aspect and largely handled outside of the actual battles.

10th edition by far has the least amount of this trait than any previous edition in 40k. Morale is barely considered beyond Battleshock, and Battleshock serves no real purpose in terms of storytelling but rather is a purely gameplay mechanic revolving around standing on objective circles. The objective circles themselves are largely interacted with in two ways: Standing on them or standing on them and doing "an action". Armies are not constructed by any real logical structure that would be sensible in a battle; you simply grab what you minis you want and put them on the table. Army loadouts are internally balanced and limited to what comes in the packaged GW box rather than encouraging players to kitbash, to build their particular squad in a different manner to alter what role they play on a battlefield, or other opportunities of creative expression. Yes, there is still some of that where I give a unit of Rubrics flamers or bolters or equip Legionnaires with boltguns or chainswords, but you have to admit that those options have been considerably reduced as editions have progressed and it is only getting more and more homogenized. A unit's role is largely predetermined and GW is doing more and more to reduce any potential deviation from that predetermined role.

All of that makes for a perfectly fine tournament game, but the heart of 40k was not as a tournament game. Tournaments always existed, sure, but you can't deny they have become more and more a central focus of the game's community. Tournament performance is more of a determining factor for an army's rules than it used to be. How much of a factor it is can be debated, but you cannot deny that this difference exists.

The game is moving further away from simulation and more into the realm of being purely a marketed game for wider accessibility. It is no longer about "a battle between the Red Corsairs and the Craftworld Drehanon over the fate of the planet Moreldain" and more so about "2k points CSM raider detachment vs Aeldari wraith detachment". The community itself has changed as well reflecting this change in focus.

That is what makes 40k 40k and why the game has felt like it has less soul than it used to.

 Tyran wrote:
It wasn't worth exploring when a Carnifex was the biggest monster around.

It is very worth exploring when you are dealing with Tyrannofexes*, Riptides, Wraithknights, Greater Daemons, etc.

Older editions were simply not designed to manage the scope and scale creep monsters enjoyed since early 5th edition.

I thought they were all ok at 6 wounds. I see a wraithknight now at 18 wounds and it just seems like more of GW chasing their tail on lethality vs survivability. And I'm not impressed by the reduction in OC value and -1 to hit when it is reduced to 6 wounds or less. That's some very fine chrome there. Totally evokes the feeling that it lost an arm or leg!

 Havic1137 wrote:

The game is moving further away from simulation and more into the realm of being purely a marketed game for wider accessibility. It is no longer about "a battle between the Red Corsairs and the Craftworld Drehanon over the fate of the planet Moreldain" and more so about "2k points CSM raider detachment vs Aeldari wraith detachment". The community itself has changed as well reflecting this change in focus.

A lot in that previous post that I agree with, and the excerpt here really gets to the crux of it imo. 40K seems to have gone in a direction where it’s cranked up the bid to excise what my pals and I call the “Roleplay that gak” aspect of the game. There’ve always been people who approach the game more, or less, competitively, but certain aspects of 9E and 10E seem to be leaning harder and harder into catering exclusively to the tournament/competitive mindset and that in turn, in my experience, seems to be leading to it being increasingly the only way players are interested in approaching it, even those who aren’t anywhere near being high-end competitive types.

On another note, I’ve been lurking in this thread since its inception and, given that 10E was the push I needed to jump off the Official 40K churny-go-round and start cooking up my own homebrew rules, thanks to everyone whose comments on rules stuff in here has given me food for thought.

40k used to be:
WARgame
Even if it wasn't very "milsim" in the first place.

40k now is:
warGAME
Now it's just a glorified collectible card game with expensive cards that take a while to build & paint(hopefully before they're legended or otherwise deleted)

Yeah, find that pretty hard to disagree with, given the current state of things.

Havic1137 Post exalted and well explained. as a veteran i simply put it this way (effectively the same thing you explained just much shorter)

40K was always about epic battles in the 40K universe. forces are not supposed to be "balanced" for tournament play. they are supposed to be thematic and fit the way the armies fight in the universe. as such your job as the general during the actual game is to exploit your enemies weaknesses and play to your own armies fighting style/strength. so that both players have a fun time. in fact that last part used to be in GW rule books.

Which is why our oldhammer group while using 5th edition as the core rules set allows players to use whichever 3rd-7th ed codex they want as it best fits the feel of how their army should be in the setting. needless to say there is a high favorability for 3rd and 4th ed codexes.

On another note, I’ve been lurking in this thread since its inception and, given that 10E was the push I needed to jump off the Official 40K churny-go-round and start cooking up my own homebrew rules, thanks to everyone whose comments on rules stuff in here has given me food for thought.

Depending on what edition you want to base it off of both Mezmorki and myself have done a bunch of work in this area. his is based on 7th ed and mine is off 5th ed.

Mine
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/806639.page

Mezmorki's prohammer (he is a madman with the amount of work he put into his version)

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/796101.page

Best of luck-build community and you will have a great time.

I mostly, or sort of half, agree with Havic1137's post. My view on modern 40k is that during 8th and 9th I much preferred its approach compared to older editions because I never thought those editions did a particularly good job of being a simulation and the way the rules and missions were constructed led to very static, boring games, oftentimes focused on camping in deployment zones and just tabling people. The strength of 8th and especially 9th is that they focused more on being capital G Games, rather than trying to present some sort of accurate simulation of warfare and were better for it, with the mission systems pulling a lot of weight in this respect.

The problem with assigning general dissatisfaction with the edition on how abstract it is because holding objective points is weird or actions are too vague ignores that you have people like me, who loved 9th edition but who increasingly cannot stand 10th. Many of these people are not old grognards either; I know a pretty large amount of people who started in 8th or 9th and who are basically abandoning 10th. These people range from relatively casual-narrative players to very comp-focused ones.

What it comes down to is that even though they were much more abstracted, 8th and 9th still allowed for loads of flavour and customisation. They were allowed to have depth in their mechanics and present crunchy rules systems for individual armies, that also did a good job of making many armies feel more varied from one another and allowed people to play into the fantasy of their chosen faction overall relatively well.

The core design ethos of 10th's indexes and codexes does not allow for that. There used to be more complicated factions who would make use of more in-depth or abstract rules. Now everyone gets 1 faction rule, and it's often something very bland. Ways to customise and play your characters in interesting ways are completely gone. I'm thinking about all the crazy silly ways I could run Farseers in 9th and how now they do One Thing only, and that Thing changes if they sit on a bike. For some reason. I love how the Supreme Ruler of the Necron Race, a being a staggering importance with an equally impressive and complex model gets to... choose One Thing to do at the start of your command phase and that is pretty much the sum-total of all of his rules. It is all so unfathomably BLAND.

GW basically heard the vocal minority of garagelord 1-game-every-3-month dadgamers complaining about "complexity," got spooked by some of 9th's crazy balance issues, and then massively overcorrected for 10th. It's a rules system designed for new players, and the aforementioned garagehammer players, and to its credit it does a good job of appealing to both. But if you're anyone else? I just don't see what the game has to offer currently.

 Bosskelot wrote:

The problem with assigning general dissatisfaction with the edition on how abstract it is because holding objective points is weird or actions are too vague ignores that you have people like me, who loved 9th edition but who increasingly cannot stand 10th. Many of these people are not old grognards either; I know a pretty large amount of people who started in 8th or 9th and who are basically abandoning 10th. These people range from relatively casual-narrative players to very comp-focused ones.

As an example, myself! I started turn of 9th edition, and have gone near completely to 3rd or HH. Only games of 10th I play at this point is when It's all I can get a game for. I played a bunch of 10th when it came out, as I was part of tabletop-sim crusade group. I think i have upwards of 60 games of 10th under my belt at this point? (I was unemployed at the time meaning I had large amounts of free time.) What struck me was how much 10th felt like it was fighting me at every turn. Eveything I wanted to do was bad. Build a skew list? Too bad, you over committed. Build a balanced list? Bad, that's what you get for trying to follow the old Force Org chart layout for units. Follow fluff or your own lore? Shame, should a run 3 Gladiators. On, and on, and on. Gameplay too. The strats were simultaneously fiddly and too broad. (Faction strats are specific at best and incredibly narrow at worst, generic strats are similar besides Grenades, smoke, overwatch and that one where you interrupt the melee order) The List building is simultaneously restrictive but also far to lose.

10th was just a hot mess and i quit playing it, and I found systems that were more of the best parts of 9th to me. 3rd, Heresy, Star Wars legion, etc.

So many of 10ths issues in my opinion, is that it's tying to distance itself from what it was while trying to retain it's old customer base. As harsh as it was, I think fantasy did it right by stripping off the bandaid and starting from scratch to make a new game. Customers that were still interested were retained, those that were moved on to Conquest, Kings of War, ASoIF, etc. 40k either needs to go back, or do the same. "Warhammer 43k" Where they skip forward a few years and basically restart the universe. I think it's the only way to prevent 40k from being in this weird limbo it's in now. I probably wouldn't follow it, but it would allow GW to actually do what they're tryng to do and not just string it's community along only harvesting ill-will for their IP.

Havoc is mostly pretty spot on, but i think where I might disagree with them is that I don't think the "Core rules" are fully to blame for sucking the soul out of the game. Instead I think it's the design of the units themselves and the way army building works, coupled with the scenario system. I think the game would be vastly improved if it brought back FOCs (hell, I'd go a step further and say to steal the FOC system used by FoW/Team Yankee) instead of this nebulous (up to 3 of any unit, 6 if it has battleline) nonsense we have now. Working within constraints and building around something that's tangibly representative of the doctrinal approach used by forces within the setting is fun. Saying "you can take whatever you want in almost whatever quantity you want at any time" is not - it results in bizzaro world army lists divorced entirely from anything that looks remotely representative of what would actually be fielded by these forces, unless a player goes out of their way to try to adhere to some semblance of a TOE.

Bring back points per model - a land raider Crusader holds 16 models, but I can't take a unit of 16 models to fill it, nor can I take a unit of 8 Terminators. I mean the option is there, but who in their right mind would pay for a 20 model unit of BT crusaders but only field 16 of them? Sure, I can take a unit of 6 termies and add characters to it - but at most you can only do 2 so you end up with unused capacity unless you have an unattached character. The best you can do really is a unit of 10 minis, a unit of 5, and a characte, but that's pretty limiting, especially in an army where there's a unit option that could in theory fill the transport on its own if you were only allowed to field it in such a way.

Likewise, as many probably recall I am not a fan of wargear points because they are arbitrary, trivial, aren't really a balancing mechanism like most believe, etc. but its clear that unlimited options don't work and just results in people min-maxing basically. My recommendation would be to have a separate wargear points budget, and have upgrades and weapon swaps paid for separately out of that. That way GW can maintain the streamlined beginner friendly system while preventing everyone from thing every possible option available without limitation.

I think that alone would add back some of that soul to the game that were all missing and make for a vastly improved experience for everyone.

 Arschbombe wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:


The fact that monsters couldn't lose their legs and be immobile, or lose their guns and not be able to shoot, was also a problem of the AV era. There is nothing intrinsically different between a monster's legs and a vehicle's tracks (or robot legs) that mean damaging them would immobilise one and not the other.

Others have addressed your other points about the AV system in older editions so I'll just address this one. I think the impulse to treat mechanical things differently from biological things in the rules was sound. Mechanical things tend to break in ways that biological ones don't. Despite the generally more simulationist approach of the older editions, I don't think they felt that degrading MC capabilities in response to damage was something worth exploring. After all if they aren't doing it for a 3 wound chapter master why bother with a 4 wound carnifex?

Because they bothered with a dreadnought, sentinel and Killa Kan? Carnifex and wraithlord legs are entirely equivalent in that comparison.

A wraithlord and war walker were not only the same size but they literally carry the same weapons. From a background perspective they're also made of the same materials.

Mount a brightlance on a wraithlord and it's immune to being destroyed. Put the same weapons on a war walker and suddenly it can be. 'but wraithlords should be vehicles anyway ' was a cry at the time - showing how subjective the rules are to begin with.


The game doesn't use that many mechanics that the distinction is necessary. If one model can be designed to lose its gun or stop moving, so can something else that fills the equivalent space in another army. Argument from tradition, or simply personal preference shouldn't enter into it.

The better question there is "Should the Wraithlord have been a Monstrous Creature at all?" when, as you point out, it is both functionally and materially an Eldar Dreadnought (and, prior to 3rd, was literally an Eldar Dreadnought)...

as I recall the old WD articles about it, the decision was the Eldar already had walkers and while it should have been a walker too they did not want to have to very different in style in the same book
so it was given other rules to make it more different

What if there was a damage chart for monsters, so that they could lose limbs (and the related weapons)?

Hellebore wrote:

Because they bothered with a dreadnought, sentinel and Killa Kan? Carnifex and wraithlord legs are entirely equivalent in that comparison.

I don't think they are. The dread, kan, and sentinel are crewed vehicles so they use the vehicle rules. The carnifex is a living creature, essentially a very large infantry model so it uses the same basic rules. The wraithlord is like a golem. It is a construct animated by the soul of a dead eldar. Deciding to not use vehicle rules for it seems entirely reasonable to me.

Still, I don't understand the particular hang up about monstrous creatures. Why not insist on the same degradation mechanic for all multiwound models? Like let's make it so that Eldrad loses one psychic power when he goes from 3 wounds (4th ed) to 2. And then when he gets to one wound he takes psychic tests at LD-2. Wouldn't that be flavorful and cool (and fair to the oppressed class of vehicles)?

The game doesn't use that many mechanics that the distinction is necessary. If one model can be designed to lose its gun or stop moving, so can something else that fills the equivalent space in another army. Argument from tradition, or simply personal preference shouldn't enter into it.

So every game that has ever treated vehicles differently from other classes of models is wrong?

With some luck, a lascannon could one-shot pretty much any vehicle. It couldn't one shot a Wraithknight regardless of how many 6s you rolled. While on the other hand of the spectrum, the Wraithknight will operate at 100% efficiency until the last wound is lost.

It is hilarious people argue for a more simulationist system and yet don't see the issue with MC rules. They argue for the importance of maneuvering and suppressing for counterplay and yet don't see the issue with a unit rules that didn't allow anything of that.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Arschbombe wrote:
Like let's make it so that Eldrad loses one psychic power when he goes from 3 wounds (4th ed) to 2. And then when he gets to one wound he takes psychic tests at LD-2. Wouldn't that be flavorful and cool (and fair to the oppressed class of vehicles)?

Eldrad lost a wound to a lascannon and he died because instant death.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Arschbombe wrote:
I see a wraithknight now at 18 wounds and it just seems like more of GW chasing their tail on lethality vs survivability. And I'm not impressed by the reduction in OC value and -1 to hit when it is reduced to 6 wounds or less. That's some very fine chrome there. Totally evokes the feeling that it lost an arm or leg!

It isn't trying to be a simulationist ruleset and yet it still does more than the supposedly simulationist oldhammer.

It really highlights how incomplete MC rules were in an otherwise "simulationist" game.

To Tyran's point with a few exceptions most MCs are susceptible to small arms fire from any direction in the older edition, most vehicles are not. As nearly all MCs are T6 (with the exception of an upgraded carnifex from 4th or a wraith lord). meaning that even a las gun can wound them on a 6+ all vehicles in the game had a minimum of 10 armor(some even higher) on the rear meaning you had to have a bolter or stronger weapon to hurt them. you also had to maneuver into position to get that sweet back shot. on the flip side-force weapons can one shot a MC.

It is really a trade off that makes them different from vehicles with different tactics employed to deal with them. it also gives AT weapons a defined role in the setting. as a general of the force you need to fight the right fight. bring the right tools to get the job done and put them into a position where they can. overall it enriches the setting and the feel of the game.

Yeah I thought the MC rules were reasonably balanced for the early editions (3-4th). If I had to go back though, I'd recalibrate MCs and introduce a Damage mechanic, which would open up more room for the bigger things that appeared in the later editions.

Once High AP spam really took off in 5th ed, the Classic MCs looked weak, encouraging an MC inflation with bigger and tougher MCs. But once you had those, classic anti-MC weapons like Lascannons got less and less useful, and it spiralled out of control.

A dreadnought or any other vehicle would get one shot by a 4 lascanon. Meanwhile a MC eldar dreadnought with its high T and multiple wounds would still be alive. From what I have seen in the old edition rules, MC were vastly superior to tanks or walkers.

Karol wrote:
A dreadnought or any other vehicle would get one shot by a 4 lascanon. Meanwhile a MC eldar dreadnought with its high T and multiple wounds would still be alive. From what I have seen in the old edition rules, MC were vastly superior to tanks or walkers.

That statement doesn't take into account the AV of the vehicle in question. It was totally possible to have 4 Lascannons do nothing to a high AV target.

Like a Destroyed result from a successful Lascannon hit against AV 14 was 1/12ish. A Krak Missile? 1/36. And S7 and below couldn't scratch it.

Against a Wrathlord it's a sucessful Lascannon Wound on a 2/3 chance. A Krak Missile 50%. And you had to go down to S4 to be impervious.

 aphyon wrote:
To Tyran's point with a few exceptions most MCs are susceptible to small arms fire from any direction in the older edition, most vehicles are not. As nearly all MCs are T6 (with the exception of an upgraded carnifex from 4th or a wraith lord). meaning that even a las gun can wound them on a 6+ all vehicles in the game had a minimum of 10 armor(some even higher) on the rear meaning you had to have a bolter or stronger weapon to hurt them. you also had to maneuver into position to get that sweet back shot. on the flip side-force weapons can one shot a MC.

It is really a trade off that makes them different from vehicles with different tactics employed to deal with them. it also gives AT weapons a defined role in the setting. as a general of the force you need to fight the right fight. bring the right tools to get the job done and put them into a position where they can. overall it enriches the setting and the feel of the game.

Leaving all aside the very real balance issues that made MC rules dominate vehicles from 6th all the way into HH 2.0. It is a very gamey trade off, not a simulationist one.

To be blunt it comes kinda hypocritical that you want vehicles to have highly simulationist rules but are fine for MCs to only get to be blatantly gamey rules.

^I can see where that view comes from, but I do think damage to machines tends to manifest differently than damage to living creatures, and their reaction is different. Machines don't have adrenaline surges or keep functioning even though damage will prove fatal later, they tend to fail abruptly and mechanically.

I get why degradation of MCs is a desired thing too, mind you. I just think it's fine that the two things are different.

Adrenaline isn't going to keep you swinging a severed limb as though it's still attached.

 Insectum7 wrote:
...Machines don't have adrenaline surges or keep functioning even though damage will prove fatal later, they tend to fail abruptly and mechanically...

Regular machines might not, but lest we forget we are talking about 40k machines, some of which might be daemonically possessed and/or have self-healing metal surfaces (note: I don't recall the exact rules for daemonic possession/necrodermis, they may have had some special rule to account for that w/r/t damage). Besides, on the scale of the game itself, I don't think there's any point distinguishing between a shattered femur that will heal over time and a metal spar that will need external repair. A shot leg is a shot leg is a shot leg.

That said, I'm not averse to having a separate damage table or set of effects for MCs (there would necessarily be some overlap for things like damaged weapons and immobilization, ofc), and I wouldn't even mind MCs getting a chance to repair some of the damage naturally in later rounds to account for adrenaline/regeneration/etc, so long as it was balanced. For my part, the issue is that vehicles can be degraded/mission killed without dying whereas MCs are magically perfect until they very suddenly aren't.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Adrenaline isn't going to keep you swinging a severed limb as though it's still attached.

That's true, but I think there's many a hunter that can tell a story about an animal getting shot and running off before succuming to their wounds later. Likewise a number of war stories about similar occurences involving humans.

 waefre_1 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
...Machines don't have adrenaline surges or keep functioning even though damage will prove fatal later, they tend to fail abruptly and mechanically...

Regular machines might not, but lest we forget we are talking about 40k machines, some of which might be daemonically possessed and/or have self-healing metal surfaces (note: I don't recall the exact rules for daemonic possession/necrodermis, they may have had some special rule to account for that w/r/t damage). Besides, on the scale of the game itself, I don't think there's any point distinguishing between a shattered femur that will heal over time and a metal spar that will need external repair. A shot leg is a shot leg is a shot leg.

That said, I'm not averse to having a separate damage table or set of effects for MCs (there would necessarily be some overlap for things like damaged weapons and immobilization, ofc), and I wouldn't even mind MCs getting a chance to repair some of the damage naturally in later rounds to account for adrenaline/regeneration/etc, so long as it was balanced. For my part, the issue is that vehicles can be degraded/mission killed without dying whereas MCs are magically perfect until they very suddenly aren't.

Back in the day those semi-magical or high tech vehicles specifically had rules to ignore or mitigate various damage effects. Like Daemonic Posession allowed a Vehicle to ignore Stunned/Shaken results, iirc.

 Tyran wrote:
Leaving all aside the very real balance issues that made MC rules dominate vehicles from 6th all the way into HH 2.0 . . .

Eh, I think this depends heavily on the "monster" in question.

I use quotation marks because, if we're honest, about 80% of the issues were with units that should by all rights have been vehicles but that were instead made into monsters. *cough* Dreadnight *cough* Riptide *cough*.

These units were what really changed the scope of monsters. Previously, while monsters seemed more resilient than vehicles in that they didn't suffer immobilised, weapon destroyed etc., they tended to be a lot more fragile in other ways. Tyranids, for example, had 3+ or 2+ armour saves but no invulnerable saves at all (I believe the best they could get for ages was a 6++ on the Hive Tyrant). This meant that even their 6-wound monsters were highly vulnerable to AP1-3 weapons.

The alternative was Daemons, which tended to be the reverse - only having invulnerable saves (so less vulnerable to high-AP weapons but more vulnerable to poor-AP, high RoF weapons.

But then we saw units like the Dreadknight, which was allowed a 2+ armour save *and* a 5++ invulnerable that could be further upgraded to 4++ with a psychic power.

It just seems like clear examples of designers not wanting their pet units to have any drawbacks or weaknesses.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Back in the day those semi-magical or high tech vehicles specifically had rules to ignore or mitigate various damage effects. Like Daemonic Posession allowed a Vehicle to ignore Stunned/Shaken results, iirc.

I'd say that this also became something of an issue because (IMO) the ability to ignore results on the damage table became far too widespread. Thus, the whole point of having those results (i.e. being able to take a vehicle out of commission for a turn without needing to outright destroy it) became moot. Instead, we ended up with damage tables where the first 3-4 results did absolutely nothing.